Stolen by the Alpha King

*"The gash is too deep for a normal bandage."* Briar Callahan has both hands on Denny's side and the blood is soaking through faster than she can fold the cloth. A boar caught him in the ravine. She could close the wound herself, and the heat in her palms is begging her to.

She reaches for bandages instead, because of what her grandmother told her when she was fourteen: *Never let them see what you are, child. They'll call it a gift, then they'll call it a crime.*

Then Sloane Corbin walks into the clearing and starts listing the things Briar always seems to be carrying. Moonstone pendants. Herbs. Salves.

A raven goes out before dawn. By morning there is a scroll on the table in the alpha's house: by decree of Aldric Vane, Alpha King of the Six Territories, Thornwood Pack is summoned for investigation of a reported threat to pack security.

The threat is Briar. Variants are forbidden in the Six Territories and the punishment is death. She cannot hide, either - the King travels with bloodhound shifters who scent magic the way other wolves scent rain, and her grandmother tried hiding once. It took them three days.

Then, in front of the whole hall, Aldric offers an alternative. The Right of Claim allows an alpha to take any unmated she-wolf as his chosen mate if her pack refuses to surrender her for punishment. He invokes it on a woman he has just met.

What he gives her at the other end of the journey is a room and a list of conditions. Stay in it. Do not use the magic. Do not contact her brother. Do not try to leave.

What she gives him back is patience. Her grandmother taught her more than healing; she taught her to wait until an enemy shows his weakness. And there is a great deal to look at. Rogue camps clustered along the eastern border as if something were herding them. A king who says, flatly, that he would repeal the Right of Claim. A scarred man who keeps appearing in her dreams. And the question of what Aldric Vane actually did fifteen years ago, when the magic was burned out of her grandmother.

Sloane is not finished either. Her father has served three Alpha Kings and knows where every secret in the pack is buried.

This is a shifter romance about an outlawed healer, a king who takes first and explains later, and a woman who spends her captivity quietly building a case against the man who made it. The romance is closed-door.